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                <h1>Humans vs. Machines: An AI Odyssey</h1>
                <p>By <strong><em>Christopher Watkins</em></strong></p>
                <p>March 10, 2016</p>
                <p>
                    <strong><em>***Breaking News: AlphaGo has won the first two matches!***</em></strong>
                    <span><em>In this, the third in our series on the epic Go matches being played between AlphaGo
                            (Google’s Artificial Intelligence software) and Lee Se-Dol (Current Go World Champion),
                            we look at the history of Humans vs. Machines, and the innovations that have led us to
                            this incredible moment in time. </em></span>
                </p>
                <p><img src="https://i2.wp.com/blog.udacity.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/56df2490a351d802222160.gif"
                        alt="GO GAME"></p>
                <p>
                    For as long as humans have
                    built things, we’ve wrestled with the implications of what we’ve built. In many cases, these
                    philosophical
                    and
                    ethical wrestlings have made for great drama—think Frankenstein, or 2001: A Space Odyssey.
                    Often,
                    the
                    hypothetical
                    scenarios we envision come remarkably close to true, and the discoveries we’ve made in the
                    fields of
                    Artificial
                    Intelligence and Machine Learning make clear that a “computer with a mind of its own” is
                    <strike>going
                        to
                        take
                        over the
                        world</strike> not such a fantastic thing to imagine any longer.
                </p>
                <h2>The Triumph Of Deep Blue</h2>
                <p>
                    Perhaps this is why we are so
                    captivated by human vs. machine competitions, because the idea of being overcome by that which
                    we’ve
                    created
                    speaks
                    to something very deep within our collective consciousness. When IBM’s Deep Blue faced off
                    against
                    Garry
                    Kasparov<sup>1</sup>,
                    the event resulted in more than
                    <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/deepblue/">three billion
                        impressions</a> around the world, and when IBM’s later
                    creation Watson challenged the champions on Jeopardy, millions of viewers were glued to the
                    proceedings.
                </p>
                <h2>DeepMind’s AlphaGo</h2>
                <p>
                    Taking place right now, there is an event that, while not likely to scale the same media
                    heights,
                    may in
                    fact have far greater implications when it comes to the future of “intelligent” machines. On
                    March
                    9, in
                    Seoul,
                    South Korea, a computing system know as AlphoGo (built by researchers at DeepMind—a Google
                    Artificial
                    Intelligence
                    lab) began
                    <a
                        href="http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/04/youtube-will-livestream-googles-ai-playing-go-superstar-lee-sedol-in-march/">
                        a five-game match
                    </a> against Lee Se-dol, one of the very best players in the world at the ancient game of Go.
                </p>
                <p>Why is this so significant?</p>
                <p>
                    Here is how the DeepMind team explained it in their paper
                    <a href="http://airesearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/deepmind-mastering-go.pdf">
                        Mastering the Game of Go with Deep Neural Networks and Tree Search:
                    </a>
                </p>
                <p><em>
                        The game of Go has long
                        been viewed as the most challenging of classic games for artificial intelligence due to its
                        enormous
                        search
                        space
                        and the difficulty of evaluating board positions and moves.
                    </em></p>
                <p>
                    Put another way, winning at Go is a kind of Holy Grail
                    for those who strive to create machines that can “think” on their own, because success at this
                    uniquely
                    complex
                    game
                    seems to require something more than just skill, knowledge, and experience. It requires
                    intuition.
                    Feel.
                    Style.
                    Characteristics we associate with humans, not with machines.
                </p>
                <hr />
                <p>
                    <sup>1</sup>Garry Kasparov is a Russian chess Grandmaster and
                    former World Chess Champion
                </p>


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